Riot Games becomes first Twitch channel to reach one billion views

Riot Games has achieved a huge milestone, having recorded one billion views on video game streaming platform Twitch. In doing so, Riot became the first channel to achieve such a feat.

As revealed by social media statistics tracker Socialblade, Riot has crossed the 1bn mark, despite being only sixth for followers.

The company owes its success to its hugely popular League of Legends esports competitions. The riotgames channel is the main source for NA LCS and EU LCS streams, two of Riot’s most popular tournaments.

Riot tournaments are some of the most viewed in the world. According to Esports Charts, 73.5m people tuned in to watch the 2017 League of Legends World Championship last year. Likewise, the 2018 Mid-Season Invitational broke esports viewership records earlier this year, recording a peak viewership of 127.5m.

With the 2018 Worlds still to come, Riot will likely see its view count jump considerably over the next six months.

Riot Games sits ahead of gamers like ShadbaseMurderTV and Starladder1, who have racked up 427m and 382m channel views respectively. The second most viewed tournament organiser is the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ESL channel, which currently has 293m views.

Riot Games 1 billion Twitch views: How they reached the milestone

The developer owes its success to League of Legends, a hugely popular multiplayer online battle arena game, in which players pick champions to battle against each other.

Since its release in 2009, LoL has carved its place as one of the best games for competitive play.

More than $53m has been given away in more than 2,000 competitions so far. Among the most lucrative are the major league tournaments like Korea’s LCK, North America’s NA LCS and Europe’s EU LCS, as well as the lucrative League of Legends World Championship, which offers a prize pool of around $5m.